Note 7 — INTRODUCTION

One was a likeness of his father, of which he has written in eloquent and engaging terms; another, a Wordsworth, which he destroyed; a third, the picture of Elia, ‘as a Venetian senator,’ now in the National Portrait Gallery; yet another, the presentment of an Old Woman, which is likened to a Rembrandt. Having seen none of these things, all I can say about them is that Hazlitt seems to have been passionately interested in colour; that he loved a picture because it was a piece of painting; and, if he knew not always bad (or rather third and fourth rate) work when he saw it, was as contemptuous of it, when he realised its status, as Fuseli himself.